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A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Summer is upon us who live north of the equator, and for the chess world, this means Sinquefield Cup.
The 5th edition of the super tournament will be held at the fabulous Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis, Missouri from August the 2nd to August the 12th, at 2 PM EDT (20:00 Central Europe, 19:00 UK).
The line-up is impressive, as usual: Magnus Carlsen, Wesley So, Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Wei Yi.
There are so many points of interest in such a gathering of talents.

Magnus has somehow lost his aura of infallibility, that has had many fans compare the Norwegian genius to Komodo the dragon, or to Stock the fish, sticking to the same taxonomic realm. As of late, Magnus has been showing his human side, giving his opponents some hope. Not that the World Champion doesn't win tournaments anymore, but his play seems to be within reach of the other super-GMs.

Kramnik, who doesn't participate in the St. Louis event, has slipped off the needed rating to qualify for the Candidates' tournament next year. His semi-disaster in Dortmund, despite the late comeback, has allowed Wesley So and Fabiano Caruana to leapfrog the Russian in the rating list. Probably Kramnik will be watching this tournament closely, hoping for the young duo to fare rather poorly.

Peter Svidler is joining the party, and it's always a pleasure to see Peter sitting at the board.

Wei Yi has established himself as an excellent GM already. After the initial clamor, when he became the youngest person to get over the 2700 rating barrier, it seemed like the young Chinese star had to deal with his age, his will to win every game in a brilliant style, and the inevitable pressure; all of this probably slowed him down a bit. But now, at the ripe age of 18, Wei Yi sports an impressive 2750+ rating, which places him #14 in the list. The question comes easy: is Wey Yi the next Numero Uno? We'll see. Magnus is not willing to leave his throne vacant, at least for now, and until the Norwegian genius keeps finding motivations to go on.